Michael Gibson was a prisoner in Dane County (WI) jail when he became seriously ill. They brought him to Meriter hospital in Madison, coincidentally my employer, so I take this story rather personally.
Upon determining he was critically ill and faced either death or a very long and expensive treatment and recovery regime, the county made a decision. Three days after Gibson was admitted to Meriter, the county dropped charges pending against him. Basically, they said, “He is a free man. He can get up and leave any time he wants, and his hospital bill is no longer the county’s responsibility.”
But he was nearly dead, so he didn’t go anywhere. Gibson was not well enough to be realeased for another 31 days and 200K in billla. The county paid 4k, the charges accumulated for the first 3 days. Meriter sued the county for the rest.
We just lost in the WI supreme court, There is a Milwaukee Journal story here to give you some more detail. One of the courts upped the county’s share to 12K based on a different calculation of the bill, but the basic premise stood. Once the couty dropped charges, they were no longer trsponsible for his bill.
I hope this is not a trend setter. Might the governor start pardoning critically ill prisoners to walk away from the treatment costs?
Considering how hospitals pad the bill for inmates, it’s no more than an equalizing tactic.
There was a case here where a hospital had two building across a road from each other. There was a tunnel under the road to take patients from one building to the other. A patient who was an inmate had to be moved from one to the other. Instead of wheeling him down the hall like any other patient, they wheeled him to the front door, put him in an ambulance drove him to the other front door and wheeled him in.
They sit on prisoners for months or longer, often stopping their meds if the prisoner is unable to afford them himself. They often let problems slide as long as possible, in the hope that they’ll foist the whole thing off on the state prison system.
I’ve had absolute train wrecks arrive from county jails, whom I end up shipping to the hospital within hours of the inmate entering our facility. Or spending tons of time and effort in getting them tuned up.
Don’t look for the Governor to start pardoning actual convicts serving their sentences just due to high health costs though. The case cited above was one of the prisoner being held to decide whether to charge him with a crime. Had they done so, it would have violated his parole and sent him back to prison. But it was prosecutorial discretion which enabled the local system to decide to kick him out into the community.
I’ve one guy in prison we just applied for compassionate release for, as he’ll be dead in less than 6 months. Otherwise he has to serve 3 or so years. His release request was turned down.
Jails may boot out some sick ones when the opportunity arises. But once they’re in prison, especially under Truth in Sentencing, they ain’t going nowhere. Not alive anyway, in most cases.
QtM, MD who knows waaaaay more than he ever wanted to about this topic.
Something about that sentence made me wonder, whatever happened to your walnut tree? Is it still in your custody, or did you set it free on the doorstep of the local tree hospital?
Maybe I’m missing something- who would have paid for the hospital care if Gibson hadn’t been arrested? It seems likely to me that he would have ended up in the hospital even if he hadn’t been arrested , and I don’t see why the jail system should have to pay for the care of someone who’s not in their custody. Just like a prison system is no longer responsible for the medical care of those released, regardless of how they are released.
[quote]
I hope this is not a trend setter. Might the governor start pardoning critically ill prisoners to walk away from the treatment costs?[/parole]
You’d be surprised. Not pardons, but early parole. In my state it is possible ( although uncommon ) for an inmate to be released long before the normal parole eligibility date for medical reasons. The inmate must be terminally ill, and must have a life expectancy of under a year. There’s a medical review every couple of months, and if the prognosis changes ( a new treatment, the original diagnosis was incorrect, whatever), the convict returns to prison.
I have a cousin in one of the smaller backwater counties of eastern KY who had been breaking just about every law you could name in the categories of illicit substances, vehicle licensure, and most other legal arenas.
It was made very clear to his mother (among others) that they had enough on him to put him away for good, but they chose not to because the county just didn’t have the funds to deal with the withdrawal from his prodigious set of addictions, nor with his obviously impending liver failure from what I believe was the full trifecta of major viral hepatitises. (He probably went out and found a way to get Hep A just to complete the hat trick.)
He finally got picked up on some federal charges. He spent the first few months in the Federal Medical Center, but since then I hear he’s doing well.